Distributed multi-static active sonar networks are useful for detecting various underwater objects. Ping control is one aspect of a multi-static active sonar network. A conventional approach for ping control uses a simple round-robin schedule in which a fixed sequence of source-waveform combination is repeated with a fixed ping interval. Such an approach does not consider the target state, resulting in a waste of ping energy because many pings will occur when the target is in an unfavorable detection condition.
Other ping control approaches do not consider full kinematic state estimates (positions and velocities) of the tracks selected for holding in the calculation of predicted sonar performance metric, and ping controls are generated at a fixed ping rate. These approaches may result in inferior performance in target track-holding since the true sonar performance is dependent upon full kinematic state. Further, these approaches will not be able to capture high-strength specular echo opportunities.
Accordingly, an adaptive ping control method is needed that overcomes the above drawbacks and produces a more accurate prediction of performance metric by considering the full target state estimates and evaluating the performance metrics with fine sampling intervals to allow for fine tuning of the ping time.